


Did You Know That Cat's Domesticated Themselves?

by keykiyoshi7443



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cats are difficult, Drabble, Emily's dead, Gen, I didn't like how Garcia got Sergio, Minor Character Death, Temporary Character Death, small what if, so i changed it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7597780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keykiyoshi7443/pseuds/keykiyoshi7443
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Emily Prentiss dies, Reid gets Sergio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Did You Know That Cat's Domesticated Themselves?

Reid frowned as he woke up. It was still dark out, so he had no idea why he was even up. They’d gotten back from a case late last night and he’d immediately crashed after stripping to just his boxers. It had been a really trying case. They’d been called in 18 hours after a child had been abducted.

They’d only had 6 hours to find that child, and when they did, they found out that they’d been 9 hours too late. The child – 6 year old Audrey Lee – had been dead, long before they’d even been called in. That was hard for them to understand.

He knew full well that they couldn’t save everyone, but it was always hard when they couldn’t save a _child_. It was so difficult to see the looks of grief and silent blame on the faces of the parents. Sometimes he could understand why Gideon had left the job behind.

But then they saved another life, and suddenly all the horror became worth it. But lately, it’d been harder to see that. He’d taken a couple personal days after this case, he’d been planning on sleeping in and maybe catching up on Doctor Who episodes. With how busy they were, he hadn’t been able to see what the new Doctor was like.

Everything had been happening so fast. One moment they were hunting basic serial killers, the next they were hunting down Ian Doyle, an international terrorist, and finding out about Emily’s secret past. And then… well then she was dead.

Just gone. Didn’t even make it off of the table.

Then they had funeral arrangements to make and people to inform. There were more people that Emily knew than they thought, but… informing her mother had been the worst. She just… shut down and showed absolutely no emotion.

She wasn’t even able to attend the funeral. That fact made Reid sick to his stomach. He’d been one of the people who had the honour of carrying Emily’s coffin, but at the time, it didn’t feel much like an honour.

Her coffin was heavy, but not only in the physical sense. It weighed on his mind that he had carried a body, the body of his _friend_. He hadn’t attended many funerals, despite his work and his past. In fact, he’d never actually had someone close to him die. There had been that one uncle that had died when he was 5, and the memory of that funeral had begun to get fuzzy. But he hadn’t been close to that uncle in any sense. He’d only met him once.

But this was different. Emily had been one of his best friends. She’d been there for him when he needed it, and she’d always looked out for him. Like what an older sister would do. He thought of her like a sister, and she was dead. Gone forever.

He was no stranger to loss. But this one was different. Everyone in his life was always leaving. His father abandoned him at the age of 10, his mother succumbed to her illness most of the time and he’d had to raise himself, Elle had quit the team and cut all contact, Gideon had quit not long after he’d gotten addicted to Dilaudid. He cut all contact too. And then there was JJ who left to start her family at a different job. She still occasionally had dinner with him, but it wasn’t the same.

And then Emily had been killed.

But she was different. All the others, even his mom due to her refusal of treatment, had left voluntarily. They’d left him to go live their lives. But Emily had been torn away. The others could all come back anytime they wanted to. They chose to stay away.

He’d never get to see Emily smile ever again.

He could count the number of funerals that he attended on 1 hand. So when he did attend a funeral, it stuck out in his memory. He could never forget this moment, his eidetic memory made sure of it.

They had waited a day before jumping right back into cases, Seaver had tried to make up for Emily’s absence, but it wasn’t the same. Some people – mainly Strauss – questioned their capability to solve cases so soon after Emily’s death, but they proved her and the others wrong by solving a record number of cases in 3 weeks.

But he couldn’t keep up anymore, he was ready to collapse. He wasn’t thinking straight, and the head aches had come back. He was just tired, so he took a couple of days off. Hotch understood.

So all things considered, he shouldn’t be awake right now. He was still bone tired at this point, and there shouldn’t be any reason for him to wake up before the sun had even risen.

There was a weight on his chest, and his frown deepened. He tried to raise his arms out from under the blankets, but was unable to. This caused him to have a momentary surge of panic before he was able to work his arms out from under him and he lurched forward, knocking whatever was sitting on his chest off of him.

There was a yowl and a soft thump as the thing that had been sitting on his chest fell to the side of his bed. He rubbed his eyes sleepily before he turned to look at the thing that had been sitting on his chest.

It turns out that it was Sergio, Emily’s cat. It took him a moment to remember why the cat would be there, then it all came back to him. After the funeral, they’d read her will. It seems that Emily had thought ahead about her feline friend. And surprisingly, she’d left him in Reid’s care, along with some instructions on how to look after him.

Of course Reid had taken this very seriously and had proceeded to read all the information that humans had on cats to make sure that he took care of Sergio. He was one of the last reminders of Emily, and she had trusted him to look after the cat.

He tried very hard to make sure that the cat was happy, but the cat seemed to dislike him. After giving him some treats, he tolerated his presence, and when he left the window open he didn’t run away. He returned, but he wasn’t necessarily all that cuddly. That was just fine for Reid.

Cats were rather intelligent, and Reid liked to think that this was Sergio coming to terms with the fact that Emily was gone forever. God knows Reid still needs to come to terms with Emily’s death. But the cat had been coming around lately.

Taking to sitting beside Reid during his late night binge watching instead of on the windowsill or across the room. But this was the first time that he’d sat on Reid. Or really come into his bedroom as well. He looked down at Sergio questioningly.

The cat stared back at him with eyes that held just a little too much intelligence. He seemed to stare right into Reid’s soul, seeing all of his secrets. Sergio meowed softly and moved slowly towards him again. He rubbed up against his side and jumped onto his lap. He pawed at Reid’s chest, and Reid lied down again.

That seemed to be what Sergio wanted, because he settled back onto Reid’s chest. Then he proceeded to paw impatiently at his face. Well that answered the question as to why he’d woken up. But there was still the mystery as to what the cat wanted from him. He was now sitting on his chest, so it wasn’t like he could get up to feed the cat.

The cat stared at him pointedly as Reid tried to puzzle out why the cat woke him up. Then it dawned on him, his palms were still clammy and he was still breathing heavily. The bed was messed up and the sheets were damp with sweat. He must have been having a nightmare. He let out a sigh before petting the cat thankfully.

“Thank you for waking me up” he murmured softly as he pet Sergio. The cat merely closed his eyes and began to purr. Rid fell asleep to the relaxing sound of the cat purring on his chest.

He didn’t have a nightmare for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

But not all interactions with the cat went that smoothly.

Reid had just returned from yet another horrible case. This time they’d gotten there in time. The victim, a 16 year old Timothy Jones, had still been alive. But they hadn’t really gotten there in time. The Unsub had just been waiting for them. As soon as they’d arrived the Unsub had shot the kid right in front of them.

He can’t help but think if they’d just been a couple minutes faster. If he’d just seen that pattern just a bit sooner, maybe Timothy wouldn’t have died. But he can’t change the past, he just has to live with it. That doesn’t make it any easier.

Lately he’d been struggling, they’d been having too many bad cases. That piled on top of getting used to the fact that Emily wasn’t there, was making him crave. He still had some syringes and a couple bottles of Dilaudid left in his safe from the time when he was addicted to the drug.

It had been harder and harder to resist the urge to simply forget and take the drug. This case had been the tipping point and he’d actually planned on taking the drug. He’d gotten the drug out of his safe and placed it on the table. Then he’d had to return to the safe to get the syringe.

He’d only had his back to the table for a second, but then there was a smash, and he dropped the syringe in shock. Turning around he saw the bottle broken on the floor and Sergio sitting on the table looking at him innocently. At first he was pissed because the cat was on the table and that was a bad habit he knew the cat wasn’t going relinquish without a fight. And on top of that he was breaking things to get attention which would be even harder a habit to break.

But then he realized that he hadn’t thought about craving the drug the entire time he’d been cleaning up and scolding the cat. He smiled softly and had given the cat an extra treat, though verbally reminding the cat that he shouldn’t break things anymore.

After that, every time he had a craving he sat and just played with Sergio. At first the cat seemed a little reluctant, but he’d shot one little glare at a pathetic Reid and given in.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes they played together. Reid had gotten a few different cat toys, including a fake duster, a stick with feathers at the end, and a laser pointer. They’d play for hours, Reid forgot about whatever horrible thing he’d seen that day, and Sergio got some exercise.

Other times, they’d sit quietly together on the sofa. Reid would have a book in one hand, and the other would be lazily petting and scratching the cat that sat in his lap. They had an arrangement that worked, and 4 months after Emily had died, they’d found a routine that worked well for them.

 

* * *

 

5 months in to their new found relationship, Reid began to live again. He’d finally come to terms with the fact that Emily was gone, after many visits to the support group for clean cops, as well as many phone calls with his sponsor, John. And you couldn’t forget the hours of quality time spent at home with Sergio and the only sound being the bell tinkling at the end of the stick with the feathers.

He’d begun to take care of himself again, and he was acting more like the Reid that Emily had known. After her death, he’d stopped rambling about statistics and different facts. The team had been constantly sending him concerned looks every time an opportunity arose and he didn’t take it.

But then one day, 5 months to the day after Emily died, while doing some paperwork and listening to Garcia and Morgan chat, he’d blurted out “did you know that cats domesticated themselves?”

At first he’d thought he’d said it too softly, that the others didn’t hear. But then Morgan and Garcia’s heads had whipped around to face him so fast, Reid was almost afraid they got whiplash. But then he remembered that they weren’t moving fast enough to get whiplash.

They stared at him incredulously as he continued and begun a mini rant. “Cats chose to be humans companions since the humans provided them with food and shelter. In exchange, they hunted the mice in the human’s barns. Cats found us useful and chose to stay. Dogs on the other hand had to be trained.” He said in a matter of fact voice.

There was a long pause where no one spoke. Reid was afraid maybe he’d said something wrong or he shouldn’t have spewed out that random fact. But then Morgan’s face lit up in a grin and Garcia had let out a little squeal. Then she was running towards him and squishing him in a tight hug.

Morgan grinned and sauntered over to clap Reid on the back. He stared at him in confusion. Did he do something? But then Morgan turned around and yelled in the general direction of Rossi and Hotch’s offices. “Hey! Pretty Boy’s back to normal!” he yelled happily.

Only a second later, both Rossi and Hotch were out of their offices and down in the bullpen with them. “Really now! I’d just been getting used to having to look up my own statistics!” Rossi joked lightly as he watched Garcia hug the life out of Reid.

Hotch smiled gently at Reid and gave him his own hug, whispering “it’s good to have you back” once Garcia had let him go. Reid smiled softly as he looked up at his team.

Yeah… it was good to be back.


End file.
